Google's Eric Schmidt announces $1M donation to award tech grants

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen,
Google's ideas director, announced on "CBS This Morning" "New Digital
Age Grants" for groups or individuals that use technology to solve problems.

Schmidt said he donated $1 million to the effort to, in his
words, "put my money where my
mouth is."

The effort is furthering the theme of their best-selling
book, "The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives,"
in which they discuss the future of technology in its various forms. The book
comes out in paperback next week.

"The book is
about the problem," Schmidt said. "There's lots of people working on
the solutions. We identified a whole bunch of companies in different parts of
the world (who) try to solve oppressive censorship, empower individuals and make
these (things) more useful."

In the future, Cohen
argued, dictators and autocrats will have a harder time as technology spreads.

"They're going to be significantly outnumbered," he explained. "Ukraine
is an example. Venezuela is an example. We've now moved beyond just the Arab
Spring. As billions of people come on line, most of these people come online in
parts of the world that have autocratic governments. And they're going to be
the largest demographic in the world armed with mobile devices and savvy young
populations."

Schmidt added,
"We forget how many billions of people there are that work in places that
don't have the liberties of America. They want them too, and they're going to
use their phones to get them."

Google, Cohen
explained, benefits by all this via productivity.

"Google's mission is to
connect the world and get that information out," he said. "We want a
free open internet for every citizen of the world."

However, while the
young, tech savvy population may be making waves by protesting, another
population may -- with tech advancements -- be leaving a digital trail.

"So it's very difficult to
imagine a terrorist in the future operating out of a cave in Tora Bora being
even remotely relevant," Cohen said. "So every terrorist in the future is going to have to
opt in to technology."

"CTM"
co-host Charlie Rose remarked, "Or they will have a courier…"

Schmidt said,
"But they will be found. You can find them -- look at what happened with bin
Laden."

Cohen added, "And
there's a long tradition of terrorists being young and young people make
mistakes. So add technology into the mix and it all gets captured."

"We
are very clear in the book that we do not endorse individual actors leaking
such important information," Schmidt said. "We don't think people should just do that. … This
is a new problem, the ability to take a single USB card and take a million
records of your tax information or your health information. So when governments
aggregate that data, it's very important that they either not aggregate that
data or they figure out a way that people can't just take it -- especially
people who are on the inside."

Cohen added, "One
of the biggest problems in the future is the ability for an individual to leak
in bulk and do so remotely. First it was Manning, then it was Snowden. The
reality is we're going to keep seeing more and more of these individuals."

"The price was low if they make gazillions of dollars
off the kind of customers they're getting," Schmidt said. "They're getting up to 450 million
users, so that's highly valuable. The price is too high if they can't monetize
it."

Pressed if Google
was bidding for WhatsApp to the reported tune of $10 billion, Schmidt said,
"Not in the way in that you're thinking about. Let's
just say that we like WhatsApp, but we like some other things, too, including
our own products."

One of Google's
acquisitions included Motorola -- a company that was purchased at a much higher
price than it was sold for. The deal, Schmidt said, is something he is
"very, very proud of."

"Motorola was a
huge deal for Google because we got all the patents we needed and we got the
ecosystem of Android working," said Schmidt. "Look today at Mobile
World Congress. You see the announcement of Nokia using Android as part of its
platform, distancing itself from Microsoft. Android got stronger because of the
Motorola deal and it was a very, very good deal for Google."

Moving on to a
recent op-ed addressing hiring at Google, Schmidt said being an ideal candidate
is all about "intellectual flexibility."

"Over and over again, people, when they do
hiring, say, 'I want a person that did X or Y or Z in their last job.' We want
people who can deal with the future changes," said Schmidt. "Businesses
change so rapidly. … You're in much better off (position selecting) for people who are
quick enough, who say, 'OK, there's a new problem.' I always believed at Google
-- and still believe -- I don't know what the future holds, but I have the right
people to help me figure it out, and that should be the primary criteria.

"It turns out
the smartest people sometimes can't really communicate very well," Schmidt continued. "So we
actually select not just for intelligence, but also for the ability to
communicate with each other and work as teams. Nobody is a solo actor at Google
anymore."

For more with
Schmidt and Cohen, including discussion on privacy and children, watch their
full "CTM" appearance above.